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recent reading
Apr. 6th, 2012 09:59 amSome things I've read recently-ish but keep forgetting to post on:
Manga:
Blank Slate Vol 1-2 (complete series): This is a short series by Aya Kanno, the creator of Otomen, and it's about an amnesiac, sociopathic, evil assassin. In one of the sidebars, Kanno said she set out to do a series about a villain and, well, did. It's an interesting experiment, but it's too short to develop the characterization it needs to really work and still have the plot it wants, and the plot isn't strong enough to pull it off without strong characterization. The most impressive thing about it is the amazement at it coming from the same brain as the adorable genderbending fluff that is Otomen.
xxxHolic Vol 16-19 (end of series): This remains one of the most beautifully illustrated manga I've read (despite Clamp's refusal to actually give people bones) but I was never able to recover interest in it after the change in status quo that took place a little bit before these volumes. Strangely, I recall spending a fair bit of the early volumes wishing the series focused less on the individual customers and more on the meta plot, and then these final volumes were mostly about the metaplot, but that had changed to something that interested me significantly less by then. (And I half-think that one day Clamp just decided the next chapter would be the last, and it was.) Still, I remain fond of the series, and would be so regardless simply because it was my gateway drug into Clamp.
Wallflower Vol 22-27: I...cannot believe I've read 27 volumes of a manga in which there is only the merest hint of an ongoing plot and character growth and relationship evolution both move at a snail's pace, and where the timeline is actually on repeat. Yet, I do not regret it at all. (Well, I could do with unreading some chapters along the way, but that's true of most things that last a while.) I generally enjoy the chapters with Sunako's aunt and/or Noi-chan and the ones where random supernatural things may or may not appear (particularly possessions) best, and the ones where people try to force conformity least. (Though those always end up going terribly for the ones trying to force conformity.) But this series never fails to make me laugh a lot, even if the laughter is sometimes of the more horrified "what--..." variety. When/If this series ever ends (though for all I know, it actually has in Japan) I hope Hayakawa actually has a final arc that resolves things instead of just stopping.
Books:
A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin: Rambling, repetitive, boring. I'm not entirely sure how much is taste changing/GRRM either not caring or needing a firmer guiding hand, and how much had to do with it mostly being about plots/characters I'm either disinterested in or outright dislike, and adding a lot of POVs that weren't needed, but I feel this book would have been far more effective at about 1/4 the length. I also simply outright disliked most plot "twists," and can't help but feel that GRRM was developing it to not follow fandom expectations, as opposed to writing what he had always planned to write. It just frequently felt random and "HA HA GOTCHA!" Like, I almost think he'll make Robert be Jon's father just because everyone thinks it's Rhaegar. (Yes, I joke about how hair color makes it a valid theory but I am largely joking because GRRM has used hair color for major paterinty-centric plot developments before. Though I actually have accidentally predicted paternity reveals based on hair color and style more than once, and I think I did once write out a fanwank for how it could work based on the Arthurian themes in Jon's plot, but I've forgotten half of that now. But I digress.) I...will probably skim future books (should they ever come out...I'm not sure he's interested in writing this anymore) to see what happens with Dany, Sansa and Brienne, but this book pretty effectively killed my interest in the property as a whole.
The Mortal Bone by Marjorie M. Liu: Actually, my feelings for this one are very positive but I kept not thinking of anything to say about it that wasn't spoilery from the first word. (Well, aside from the fact that similarities to Top Cow's The Darkness seemed to increase some.) In other series, I'd be a bit leery of some of the plot developments, but as Liu has avoided the plot elements associated with the elements that would usually make me leery so far, I'm largely anticipating them instead.
Pretty Little Liars series by Sara Shepard: Yet another case of my suffering Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to awful, trainwrecky YA. I don't think I'll be complaining as much about the guys and romances in the TV series when I get back to it because what I've seen of the series is way way better on that front. Actually, I'm kind of amazed that the TV series has mostly positive relationships between women because pretty much every female/female relationship in the books is negative at some point, and ends up tense at best, and I think Jenna is the only character I liked. (I suppose this is how some people feels about the Vampire Diaries books, except unlike the VD books, the PLL books can't claim to be 1001% better when it comes to rape culture and violence against women, and way more comfortable with female sexuality. Whereas the PLL books are way way worse than the show when it comes to those factors.) I do think the resolution ofthe "who killed Ali?" plot rightly captured the feel of the 90s YA mystery ala Christopher Pike that it wanted, but while I think Shepard knew how she was going to resolv "Who killed Ali?" I think she was making up how she got there as she went along. And I'm not sure I've read anything else where in 8 books I don't think any of the main characters made a single smart decision. And I don't mean "are uninformed when making the choices" or "believe they're acting on information from a source they think they can trust" but always act on the bad information of someone they know is out to get them and who has tricked/hurt them before.
The Road to Avalon by Joan Wolf: A largely interesting Arthuriana set in post-Roman Britain and heavy on the politics and much more focused on Arthur than most Arthuriana I've read, it succeeded in making Arthur more interesting than most versions are for me (a lot of that, I think, had to do with the fact that it was written that most of Arthur's good traits and the aspects of his personality that made him a strong leader came from Ygraine. I actually think the Camelot series was trying to do this with Arthur's more douchy moments being attributed to acting like his father and his better moments being when he was showing more of Ygraine and her influence. The show was just terrible.) and Arthur and Lancelot (in his earlier incarnation as Bedwyr) more likable than usual for me until around the page 200 mark where I abruptly stopped liking both within a few pages of each other (if you read it, you can probably guess what bit for each.) Ultimately, while I found the plot interesting and engaging and liked most aspects of the take (There are some obvious MZB influences, but I didn't feel obnoxiously so, and this is almost purely historical fiction as opposed to fantasy.), Gwenhwyfar (Guenevere) and Mordered were the only characters I found to be particularly sympathetic, and it had 2 of my big pet peeves in modern Arthuriana: Ygraine/Uther is portrayed as True Love, and Morguase and Morgan are not Ygraine's daughters, but her sisters (in Morgan's case, they have different mothers and Morgan is Arthur's age.) For me, making Morguase and/or Morgan not be Ygraine's daughters completely alters some of the most interesting aspects of their roles, but that may be a YMMV thing.
Fate's Edge by Ilona Andrews: A lot better than the second Edge book, but not as good as the Kate Daniels books. I liked the caper plot a lot and liked Audrey and though the adolescent tagalongs and their issues worked well. I...did not dislike the hero, Kaldar, but I think I was supposed to not mind all his chauvinism since he got called on it, but, well, just because you get called on your attitude it doesn't erase the attitude, much less make it charming. I think I remember reading that some fans thought there wasn't enough romance in this one as compared to the others, but I didn't notice the decrease. Actually, I think I may have preferred that it had a bit less focus on the romance than what it had.
Manga:
Blank Slate Vol 1-2 (complete series): This is a short series by Aya Kanno, the creator of Otomen, and it's about an amnesiac, sociopathic, evil assassin. In one of the sidebars, Kanno said she set out to do a series about a villain and, well, did. It's an interesting experiment, but it's too short to develop the characterization it needs to really work and still have the plot it wants, and the plot isn't strong enough to pull it off without strong characterization. The most impressive thing about it is the amazement at it coming from the same brain as the adorable genderbending fluff that is Otomen.
xxxHolic Vol 16-19 (end of series): This remains one of the most beautifully illustrated manga I've read (despite Clamp's refusal to actually give people bones) but I was never able to recover interest in it after the change in status quo that took place a little bit before these volumes. Strangely, I recall spending a fair bit of the early volumes wishing the series focused less on the individual customers and more on the meta plot, and then these final volumes were mostly about the metaplot, but that had changed to something that interested me significantly less by then. (And I half-think that one day Clamp just decided the next chapter would be the last, and it was.) Still, I remain fond of the series, and would be so regardless simply because it was my gateway drug into Clamp.
Wallflower Vol 22-27: I...cannot believe I've read 27 volumes of a manga in which there is only the merest hint of an ongoing plot and character growth and relationship evolution both move at a snail's pace, and where the timeline is actually on repeat. Yet, I do not regret it at all. (Well, I could do with unreading some chapters along the way, but that's true of most things that last a while.) I generally enjoy the chapters with Sunako's aunt and/or Noi-chan and the ones where random supernatural things may or may not appear (particularly possessions) best, and the ones where people try to force conformity least. (Though those always end up going terribly for the ones trying to force conformity.) But this series never fails to make me laugh a lot, even if the laughter is sometimes of the more horrified "what--..." variety. When/If this series ever ends (though for all I know, it actually has in Japan) I hope Hayakawa actually has a final arc that resolves things instead of just stopping.
Books:
A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin: Rambling, repetitive, boring. I'm not entirely sure how much is taste changing/GRRM either not caring or needing a firmer guiding hand, and how much had to do with it mostly being about plots/characters I'm either disinterested in or outright dislike, and adding a lot of POVs that weren't needed, but I feel this book would have been far more effective at about 1/4 the length. I also simply outright disliked most plot "twists," and can't help but feel that GRRM was developing it to not follow fandom expectations, as opposed to writing what he had always planned to write. It just frequently felt random and "HA HA GOTCHA!" Like, I almost think he'll make Robert be Jon's father just because everyone thinks it's Rhaegar. (Yes, I joke about how hair color makes it a valid theory but I am largely joking because GRRM has used hair color for major paterinty-centric plot developments before. Though I actually have accidentally predicted paternity reveals based on hair color and style more than once, and I think I did once write out a fanwank for how it could work based on the Arthurian themes in Jon's plot, but I've forgotten half of that now. But I digress.) I...will probably skim future books (should they ever come out...I'm not sure he's interested in writing this anymore) to see what happens with Dany, Sansa and Brienne, but this book pretty effectively killed my interest in the property as a whole.
The Mortal Bone by Marjorie M. Liu: Actually, my feelings for this one are very positive but I kept not thinking of anything to say about it that wasn't spoilery from the first word. (Well, aside from the fact that similarities to Top Cow's The Darkness seemed to increase some.) In other series, I'd be a bit leery of some of the plot developments, but as Liu has avoided the plot elements associated with the elements that would usually make me leery so far, I'm largely anticipating them instead.
Pretty Little Liars series by Sara Shepard: Yet another case of my suffering Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to awful, trainwrecky YA. I don't think I'll be complaining as much about the guys and romances in the TV series when I get back to it because what I've seen of the series is way way better on that front. Actually, I'm kind of amazed that the TV series has mostly positive relationships between women because pretty much every female/female relationship in the books is negative at some point, and ends up tense at best, and I think Jenna is the only character I liked. (I suppose this is how some people feels about the Vampire Diaries books, except unlike the VD books, the PLL books can't claim to be 1001% better when it comes to rape culture and violence against women, and way more comfortable with female sexuality. Whereas the PLL books are way way worse than the show when it comes to those factors.) I do think the resolution ofthe "who killed Ali?" plot rightly captured the feel of the 90s YA mystery ala Christopher Pike that it wanted, but while I think Shepard knew how she was going to resolv "Who killed Ali?" I think she was making up how she got there as she went along. And I'm not sure I've read anything else where in 8 books I don't think any of the main characters made a single smart decision. And I don't mean "are uninformed when making the choices" or "believe they're acting on information from a source they think they can trust" but always act on the bad information of someone they know is out to get them and who has tricked/hurt them before.
The Road to Avalon by Joan Wolf: A largely interesting Arthuriana set in post-Roman Britain and heavy on the politics and much more focused on Arthur than most Arthuriana I've read, it succeeded in making Arthur more interesting than most versions are for me (a lot of that, I think, had to do with the fact that it was written that most of Arthur's good traits and the aspects of his personality that made him a strong leader came from Ygraine. I actually think the Camelot series was trying to do this with Arthur's more douchy moments being attributed to acting like his father and his better moments being when he was showing more of Ygraine and her influence. The show was just terrible.) and Arthur and Lancelot (in his earlier incarnation as Bedwyr) more likable than usual for me until around the page 200 mark where I abruptly stopped liking both within a few pages of each other (if you read it, you can probably guess what bit for each.) Ultimately, while I found the plot interesting and engaging and liked most aspects of the take (There are some obvious MZB influences, but I didn't feel obnoxiously so, and this is almost purely historical fiction as opposed to fantasy.), Gwenhwyfar (Guenevere) and Mordered were the only characters I found to be particularly sympathetic, and it had 2 of my big pet peeves in modern Arthuriana: Ygraine/Uther is portrayed as True Love, and Morguase and Morgan are not Ygraine's daughters, but her sisters (in Morgan's case, they have different mothers and Morgan is Arthur's age.) For me, making Morguase and/or Morgan not be Ygraine's daughters completely alters some of the most interesting aspects of their roles, but that may be a YMMV thing.
Fate's Edge by Ilona Andrews: A lot better than the second Edge book, but not as good as the Kate Daniels books. I liked the caper plot a lot and liked Audrey and though the adolescent tagalongs and their issues worked well. I...did not dislike the hero, Kaldar, but I think I was supposed to not mind all his chauvinism since he got called on it, but, well, just because you get called on your attitude it doesn't erase the attitude, much less make it charming. I think I remember reading that some fans thought there wasn't enough romance in this one as compared to the others, but I didn't notice the decrease. Actually, I think I may have preferred that it had a bit less focus on the romance than what it had.
